~ Awakenings

Daily Archives: January 4, 2016

Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of King George II of England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

In July 1754, Samuel Johnson held the first classes in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan. There were eight students in the class. At King’s College, the future leaders of colonial society could receive an education designed to “enlarge the Mind, improve the Understanding, polish the whole Man, and qualify them to support the brightest Characters in all the elevated stations in life.”

The American Revolution brought the growth of the college to a halt, forcing a suspension of instruction in 1776 that lasted for eight years,The college reopened in 1784 with a new name—Columbia—that embodied the patriotic fervor that had inspired the nation’s quest for independence.

The Pulitzer Prizes, established and endowed by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism founder Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911), are American awards regarded as the highest national honour in print journalism, literary achievements and musical composition.

Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky, one of the greatest masters of Russian drama and a founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (1898), was born on this day 152 years ago. He is best known for developing the system or theory of acting called the Stanislavsky system, or Stanislavsky method. Read more at Encyclopædia Britannica.

He penned major texts on the art of performance, such as My Life in Art, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role and coined the celebrated phrase ‘Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors’.

Konstantin Stanislavsky’s obituary was published on The New York Times.